There's a group in Britain that call themselves "air farmers," and that's exactly what they do: they harvest clean air from pristine countrysides, bottle it up and sell the bottles online. It may sound absurd, but the bottled clean air from Britain seems to have gotten a good hold on the Chinese market.
China has been struggling with poor air quality for some time now. One of the most affected areas is Beijing, which issued its second red alert for heavy smog in December 2015. It seems the poor air quality may have driven citizens to desperation that many have reportedly bought bottled clean air from the British countryside.
The bottled air is a product of Leo de Watts and his company Aethaer, pronounced eath-air. Aethaer supposedly harvests clean air from different locations in Britain and puts it in 580-milliliter (19.6 fluid once) glass jars. The 27-year-old de Watts sells the bottled clean air for a whopping £80 ($115) a jar. For the Chinese New Year, the company is giving a special 25 percent discount on a 15-jar set, bringing the original price of £1,200 ($1,725) down to £888 ($1,277).
"The AETHAER project provides clean, fresh and pure natural air in bottled form. The process involves traveling to some of the most beautiful, pristine areas of countryside, far away from industrial pollutants, motorways and impurities, in search of the most immaculate quality of air," the company explains.
Aethaer's bottled air is harvested from Dorset, Somerset, Wales, Wiltshire and Yorkshire. The company's air farmers can also take special requests to harvest air from other areas of Britain.
"There's really a market for this ... We've just started, but have already sold 100 jars to a factory in China," de Watts says. "[This] is a way of highlighting an issue with pollution and so on."
Many people would wonder how the company even does what it claims to do but, according to Aethaer, harvesting air is not an easy process. The de Watts family gets up early in the morning with the special jars to drive to specific locations and collect the cool breeze with special harvesting nests. Check out the video and see whether you would consider buying a jar or 15.
